The inimitable Roosh celebrated his 32nd birthday by posting “7 things I would tell my teenage self.” It’s not hard to figure out Roosh’s modus operandi (his book is called Bang for crying out loud) but his list is not really about sex – it’s great advice for living a good life. So damn many people squander their youth that there’s a morbid joke about it – “youth is wasted on the young.” Don’t be one of them.

Men: following this list will make you more interesting and attractive to women.

Women: following this list will give you a better baseline of happiness, satisfaction and stability, which attracts relationship-ready men, and will help you avoid toxic cultural programming and dysfunctional relationship behaviors.

I endorse every one of these points with great gusto. I especially like #3.

Dear teenage Roosh,

1. Don’t listen to your parents. They want you to have a stable and boring existence without the struggle they had to go through. They want you to play it safe instead of taking risks that may lead to your ruin or even death. Unfortunately, if you follow their advice the most you’ll get out of it is a steady paycheck. You will have a mere average existence with average women and average experiences in an average city. Understand that the more risks you take, the greater rewards you receive.

2. Hit the gym. Just because you’re not the best looking guy doesn’t mean you should give up on being attractive. Weight lifting will help you build confidence and increase your testosterone level so that taking risks literally becomes in your blood.

3. Cut off the television, internet, and video games.Pick a hobby such as music, writing, DJing, languages, or sports, and dedicate one hour per day on it. You’ll be a beast before you even hit 21, where it’ll not only make a positive contribution to your life, but give you the option to take an alternative path. [B: seriously, kill your TV.]

4. Read at least two books every month. You don’t know sh## about life right now. Hell, you still won’t know a whole lot even when you turn 30. Keep yourself sharp by tapping into the brains of others through their work. Writers have spent hundreds of hours to create books that distills all their knowledge or experience in an easily digestible format. Take advantage of that, and watch your conversational skills increase as a result.

5. Stop being concerned about what other people think of you. They don’t care about you. They are so wrapped up in their own insecurities and what you think of them that you’re wasting your energy trying to get accepted by strangers. Take risks, f$#* everyone else, and note down what you learn. If you’re not making a lot of mistakes, you’re not doing enough.

6. Take the [women] off the pedestal.

7. Have a backup plan to earning a living. Don’t count on putting in four years at college and getting a cushy job that lasts until some golden retirement. Don’t count on some &%#$ in Human Resources to like your answer to what your greatest weakness is. Don’t let people who don’t care about you determine your income. Re-read number 3 again. One hour a day into something has probably made you a mini-expert. What service or product can you now create with your expertise that someone else would be happy to buy? Trust me when I say you’ll be much happier making $20,000 a year controlling your destiny than four times as much being controlled by someone else.

Taking more risks doesn’t necessarily lead to greater rewards – that’s slightly getting into “positive thinking guru” territory for me. I can think of at least one big risk I took that I’m still paying for. I suppose the caveat would be “look before you leap” or something corny like that. It depends on the risk and what one means by rewards, I suppose.

“Don’t listen to your parents about dating or male-female relationships”

Both this and the original #1 is problematic. Seriously? Sounds like one of the dumb teen things I’ve heard countless adults REGRETTING. But that’s ok, don’t need to agree with everything. Reductionism is dangerous though, in game as well, once you get past the surface, because then you see the uniqueness of that particular situation and must adjust accordingly.

Jen: What is game to you? You seem to think it is the elaborate pattern of memorized routines, lines, statements and choreography from the Roissysphere, designed for PUAs. That’s only one part of game. Most don’t practice game at that level. Most in the manosphere are not PUAs. Many, like me, came here because we were frustrated with our wives, tired of our wives hating us and complaining at us merely for being “nice guys” (which is what they explicitly said they wanted, but, as we now know, what women say and what they do are very often two quite different things). When they got mad, we got nicer, and they got madder. We figured we must be doing something wrong. And it turned out, we were. Our wives wanted us to stand up for ourselves and to them.

Still others come here to learn how to navigate the treachery and duplicity that is the 21st century SMP. We learn what women want, what to give them, how to stand on our own two feet without a woman, and how to back away when need be. We learned that everything we’d been taught as young men (be nice, be yourself) was completely useless in today’s hookup culture. We also learned that unless we keep our wives sexually interested, they will leave us for men who do tingle them, and will take half of the money and property we’ve earned and accumulated in the process.

I know now what basic game is, and certainly that Roissy’s a nasty remote branch; some of these comments just rubbed me the wrong way. I know that basic game is practicing assertiveness, control, and confidence (in many ways), whether you’re married or presenting yourself to a potential mate. Women do indeed love this; as someone else pointed out, when they say they want nice guys, they mean STRONG guys who will treat them nicely. I just didn’t like some of the comments at the top, or the way that some more extreme men think game means molding every situation into the same thing; I’ve seen some young bucks misunderstand what women need out of game and the result’s frusterating. I’m very glad you fixed your marriage!

Jen: “I know that basic game is practicing assertiveness, control, and confidence (in many ways), whether you’re married or presenting yourself to a potential mate. Women do indeed love this; as someone else pointed out, when they say they want nice guys, they mean STRONG guys who will treat them nicely.”

So I was right before. When I hear “I just want a nice guy who will treat me right”, what she’s really saying is “I want a hot, good looking, strong, alpha man who will be nice to me, commit to me, have sex only with me, and treat me right.”

If she’s smart, though, she won’t expect to find Prince Fell-from-the-Sky, “I’ve got Gold in my heart and a constant Rod in my Penis” dream-man, however. If you sense she’s hypergamous and “settling”, RUN. She thinks she’s too good for you, you’re most likely too good for her.

Remember though that you don’t have to dominate everything in sight for her; I want a guy who rules his life, not me or those around him (there are women, however, who are submissive extremes). I do NOT need him to be the biggest leader of the town or the biggest noise of the party, though; he just needs to be in charge of his own life and respect himself as much as he respects me, and vice versa (which better be a lot).